Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

No Secret Plan at Google?

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the what's-he-building-in-there dept.

daltonlp writes "A number of smart folks have speculated that Google might leverage its computational resources to create some kind of massive online application delivery platform. Here's why they are probably wrong." One of more intelligent insights into Google, and it's pleasantly devoid of theories of Google taking over the world.

7 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. 20% of company time to goof off (productively) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    From TFA:
    That 20% is also key for attracting talent. Working at Google has a lot of perks (so I hear), but for a developer, the ability to work on personal projects is magic. To my knowledge, no other company offers this.
    3M Does. Just thought I'd mention that.
  2. Mirror by Broke+Mirror · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://daltonlp.com.nyud.net:8090/daltonlp.cgi?ite m_type=0&item_id=424

    --
    In case of Slashdotting, break mirror.
  3. Re:How many open source projects by mikkom · · Score: 3, Informative
    I wonder how many of those are open source projects of various kinds.
    I don't think the employees can decide that, I think (at least that's what I've read on most sources that discuss about this matter) that your "pet projects" that are developed on worktime are owned by google.

    This is for example how orkut got born. "In affiliation" with google at the end of the page means in real world "This is google property".
    --
    My quality social news site.com.
  4. Re:Google's usefulness by mr.newt · · Score: 2, Informative

    Driver support is not a "relatively minor part of an OS," driver support is the definition of OS. (OS stands for operating system, remember?)

    Consult: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system

  5. Re:Contents (Site Appears to Be Slashdotted) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    or read the story at mirror dot where it still has some formatting

  6. Re:Google's usefulness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    OK, I know this is all alleged, so this is all moot, but wasn't the idea behind a Google OS that it would be a hosted OS? In other words we access it remotely, and Google decide on the hardware? Why would a hosted OS need driver support (I'm assuming that Google already have drivers to support the hardware they currently have, etc)?

    What you're describing isn't an OS.

  7. Re:Google's usefulness by Wildclaw · · Score: 2, Informative

    I agree with most of what you said. I just wanted to give you a small tips about how to get the old Google Groups interface. Since Gougle Groups 2 is still in beta the new interface hasn't been propagated to Google's country domains. This means that you can still use groups.google.ca etc. to get the old interface.